Oh. Look, a lot of barren desert!

Isn't nice to get home and sleep in one's own bed? Seems to me that way back when, as a young unmarried man, that was not my goal.

We arrived yesterday evening, worn out and not looking forward to unpacking the car. Get the car washed, pay a couple of bills, and then go play golf this afternoon... if it doesn't rain (which is predicted).

But I promised something about those Carlsbad Caverns, didn't I? Also the Petrified Forest in Arizona. We went to the Forest first, that being in Arizona and west of New Mexico and all. Basically, the Petrified Forest is desert. But once, eons ago, it was a lush tropical forest. The theory is that the trees were knocked down, or fell, and lay in water for a very long time. Silicates and minerals from volcanic eruptions fell and then embedded in the wood and replaced the wood, leaving us with rocks.

Let me quote:

The sky darkens and you are blasted by the wind and tiny shards of ash. Trees are leaning toward you, cracking at the base and crashing to the ground. In an instant, all is hot, flames surround you and the forest is laid out on the ground, trunks pointing towards the volcano. The wind slows down and a fine rain of water and ash follows the cloud. Small and large fragments of cooling lava fall from the sky, burying the trees with a blanket of ash.

Then all is still, the violence of the explosion gone, and more ash is falling, smaller now, from a high cloud from the rumbling distant volcano. For days and weeks, the eruption continues, with more layers of ash burying the prone forest. Streams erode the surface, depositing gravel in their channels. Glassy lava flows erupt from domes of sticky lava. For perhaps a million years, more eruptions lay down ash, lava flows and ash with glass so hot that it is welded into hard layers.

Time passes and you remain buried with the rotting logs of the forest. The ground is now saturated with water containing dissolved silicon and oxygen, or silica, from the overlying ash. This silica is present in molecular form, as any submicroscopic particles which are carried down by water through the ash toward the buried forest. One by ones the molecules of silica replace the molecules of the wood, turning wood to solid silica, solid quartz, solid stone.

How convenient for us, eh? Of course, one of the things I noticed was that there are very few, if any, segments of these trees that are splintered from being broken by natural causes. I mean trees fall after being hit by lightning, or are blasted by high winds (like from a volcanic eruption). But picture the results of Mt St. Helen's eruption.



These trees may eventually become like the ones in the desert. If certain other conditions occur.



Here are some pictures I took.









You can see the logs are segmented, almost as if sawn into smaller chunks.

After leaving the Petrified Forest, we headed east and stayed near Socorro, NM. Dinner was, of course, Mexican food at a decent restaurant whose name I cannot recall. The next morning, we arose and headed down US 380 off of I-25. This took us through some beautiful (and some ugly) back country and a decent clip. It took us through some low mountains and flat desert. And through Lincoln, "Billy The Kid" country, and down into Roswell. We saw no aliens from outer space. And headed south to the Caverns.

I was a little disappointed with the Caverns. I mean, they are impressive. And huge. But dark. Very dark. And that meant my pictures were poor. You see, the camera I currently use is very limited. It's just a point and shoot digital and does a poor job at that. You can see much better by doing a Google Image search for Carlsbad Caverns. Or just click on this link (which saves you typing it out). Those pictures are much better than mine and they are even better than what you see inside the caverns. In terms of color and such. The caverns are quite dark, under-lit. Possibly on purpose. To get shots like the link shows, you'd have to either add some lighting (color tinted, I think), and have no tourists jostling by so you could set up a tri-pod and take the shots in the available lighting.

My best effort is:



I cannot compete with the professionals on this.

We were exhausted from hiking through the caverns but got back on the road and headed southeast through the great American Desert to Ft Stockton, Tx and I-10. We continued east until we reached Ozono and spent the night there.



More thoughts tomorrow... I think.